Nobody in the Arizona basketball program will argue that statement. Not Lyons himself, not coach Sean Miller and not even the most rabid members of the Wildcats’ fan base.

But here’s the thing: It’s just Dec. 8, and that’s OK.

The sky over Tucson is not falling. Roadrunners aren’t suddenly chasing coyotes. The season isn’t going down the toilet—in fact, the Wildcats are 7-0 after a 12-point win against Clemson on Saturday night.

“I’m not sure why he’s easy to criticize, but I feel like sometimes he takes on criticism that he really doesn’t deserve,” Miller said. “You think about this: He’s been at Arizona for a grand total of seven games.”

In those first six games, Lyons had 18 turnovers and just 14 assists. Those aren’t good numbers for anyone, especially a point guard. And Lyons is Arizona’s new point guard. He transferred from Xavier this spring—he was granted immediate eligibility as a graduate transfer—and was thrust into position to fill the Wildcats’ most pressing need.

But the problem is, Lyons wasn’t a point guard in his three seasons at Xavier. He played alongside one of the best point guards in the country, the do-everything Tu Holloway. Lyons thrived as Holloway’s sidekick, with his ability to spot up or penetrate to the basket and convert or draw a foul and head to the free-throw line.

The duo was dynamic.

At Arizona, everything is different. Everything that was comfortable and familiar at Xavier—his teammates, his role in coach Chris Mack’s offense and his position on the court—is gone, replaced by nothing but newness. Yeah, that might take a little adjustment.

“I’m just trying to figure it out,” Lyons said Saturday night. “A lot of people want me to score, say if I’m not scoring, I’m not having a good game. Or if I turn the ball over, I’m not having a good game. Where, really, I just bring leadership and teamwork to my team. Chemistry.”

Against Clemson, Lyons turned in his best game of the season.

He finished with 20 points, four assists, four rebounds, one steal and just one turnover—zero in the final 35 minutes of an intense road contest.

“If you watched him play tonight, you could make the argument that he might have been the best player on the court,” Miller said. “He had four assists and one turnover. He didn’t all of a sudden figure it out between this week and last week. It’s just a little bit like our freshmen—the more that he practices and the more than he plays, the more he’ll settle in and get better at the things I know he can do.”

What Lyons never will do is play a perfect point guard. He won’t be Kendall Marshall or Trey Burke or Aaron Craft. He will, though, be plenty good enough to lead a young Arizona squad to a Pac-12 championship and a deep run into the NCAA Tournament.

Eventually.

He showed flashes Saturday against Clemson—he showcased his ability to attack the basket and his steady hand at the free-throw line (he was 5-for-5 from the stripe), and he showed an insistence on working on his passing. Early in the first half, he tried to float a lob pass into 7-foot freshman Kaleb Tarczewski but put too much on the basketball (his lone turnover of the game). Five minutes later, he tried the same thing. This time, Tarczewski collected the lob and went up for the easy bucket.

“I’ve got faith in all my bigs,” Lyons said. “If they drop a pass one time or I throw a bad pass, it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop throwing them the ball. They’re McDonald’s All Americans for a reason. They’ve got to get the ball.”

Arizona led by 14 points in the first half, but Clemson closed that gap to four by halftime and continued its push after the break. The Tigers, in a flurry of highlight-quality dunks and clutch 3-pointers, rode a wave of momentum and jumped out to a six-point lead nine minutes into the second half.

More than passes and turnovers and points, handling those types of situations are Lyons’s specialty.

“There’s a lot of young guys on the team,” Lyons said. “Brandon (Ashley) and Gabe York, they both came to me at different times and said, ‘You’ve got to be the leader, you’ve got to take over the game and step up.’ When you hear things like that from the young guys, it lets you know you really are one of the leaders on the team. That’s when I tried to step it up and make my teammates better.”

Arizona retook the lead at 49-47 when Lyons found Tarczewski underneath for a dunk with 7:03 left. A Lyons-spurred flurry a few minutes later put the game out of reach—he attacked the lane and scored on a runner, then he hit Kevin Parrom for a layup and then scored on a layup of his own after Nick Johnson blocked a shot and found Lyons racing ahead of the defense.

That put Arizona up a dozen with a little more than two minutes remaining.

“We’re winning,” said Johnson, who had 13 points. “We know that each and every game we’ll get more experienced. We’ll get games under our belt and our young guys will learn to play with our old guys. We’re just sticking with it.”

There will be bumps in the road for the Wildcats. There’s probably going to be one in their next game, next Saturday night against a red-hot Florida squad. There could be one in the Diamond Head Classic or when the Pac-12 season opens in January. Those will be the moments when Miller surely will love having Lyons as his point guard.

“He has a huge heart,” Miller says, “and I would rather have a player and a guard on our team with that kind of confidence and heart sometimes than I would someone a guy who does everything right. One of the things he’s good at is, when the going gets tough, he rises up and he did that in the second half tonight.”